The sparsely populated Baltic state with a population of just 1.3 million hopes the 165 "fast chargers" will overcome the "chicken and egg" problem facing the take-up of electric cars worldwide.

The network of charging points, which was opened officially on Wednesday but has been running for several months, uses direct current (DC) to charge cars in less than 30 minutes, rather than around eight hours to recharge a car's battery as is the case with most of the more than 3,000 points in the UK.

Estonia's minister of the environment, Keit Pentus-Rosimannus, said: "The fact that recharging is so easy is one of the main reasons more and more Estonians will decide in favour of electric cars in future. Our entire transport policy should be based on the notion that environmentally friendly travel is the cheapest and simplest option there is."

Ulrich Spiesshofer, head of discrete automation and motion at ABB, the Swiss company that makes the charging points and won the tender for the network in January 2012, said: "Having a nationwide fast-charging network will encourage motorists to switch to electric vehicles and it will motivate other countries to invest in their own charging infrastructure."